Dear China,
As state leaders from across Africa gather in China for the ninth China-Africa forum, and as I witness your rise to global dominance and superpower status, I, as an ordinary Ghanaian, can’t help but look at the battered continent, whose people, despite toiling under the scorching sun, continue to live below the poverty line. The question that echoes through generations persists: When will Africa’s resources truly serve its children?
During a visit to the U.K. in 2019, I rented an Airbnb from a young Chinese man. His warm hospitality and helpfulness left a lasting impression. During our conversation, he proudly proclaimed, “God made China, and China made everything.” This statement encapsulates China’s essence for me and many of my generation. Growing up in Ghana, Sunday mornings were not just for church but also for “Journey to the West.” While my family attended services, I would sneak out, find a nearby spot with a television, sit on the floor, and immerse myself in the story of the Buddhist monk and his companions battling evil on their pilgrimage. My love for Chinese culture, shared by countless African peers, blossomed during your nation’s remarkable transformation into a global powerhouse. It is within our lifetime, our thirty-something years, that you have ascended to prosperity and total effectiveness.
A Friend or Foe?
China, the country I’ve known since childhood, feels like a friend. I recognize that this sentiment might be controversial, given the historical exploitation of Africa by other world powers. While self-preservation is understandable, I believe in the power of empathy and humanity. As your influence grows, I urge you to wield it responsibly, ensuring that power doesn’t corrupt your good intentions. I am optimistic that the same focus and discipline that fueled your economic rise will not forsake its human-centric focus. By ‘human,’ I mean every individual, regardless of their wealth or background.
No Tough Love, Treat Me as an Equal
As I write, I ponder the nature of power and its purpose. Is it merely a tool for domination and subjugation? Or can it be harnessed to uplift and empower? Is the pursuit of power and dominance solely for the purpose of subjugating others and reveling in their misery, or is there a higher purpose? Is power merely a means for the wealthy to indulge themselves and their allies while neglecting those who provide the very foundation of their wealth?
I fear that as your needs grow, my concerns might be overshadowed. I wonder if you will consider my needs as your own growth. I hope that our shared history of struggle will foster understanding and empathy. I urge you not to collude with my unscrupulous children, who have been detrimental to my progress.
I can attest that throughout our years of interaction, your contributions have been significant, reflecting a genuine desire for mutual benefit and respect. However, I acknowledge that every journey encounters storms. So, I ask that you also consider my interests when evaluating your own needs.
My Hopes and Concerns
Your growing footprint in Africa fills me with both hope and trepidation. I am concerned about the impact of your presence as you traverse my lands and about the policies that will shape our interactions. You have numerous historical examples to learn from. Will you replicate their actions or forge a new path? I strongly encourage the latter. I believe in your capacity for good judgment and your commitment to building a “community with a shared future.”
As you encounter resistance from the U.S. and the E.U., remember that my door has always been open. Was my door ever closed to anyone? Who safeguards my interests when those entrusted with my protection act like hungry eaglets, eagerly awaiting scraps from the hunt?
You are the new powerhouse, surpassing the feats of those who once dominated and marginalized us. I recently heard that you have become faster, more efficient, and cost-effective in your production and that you manage your affairs well. Perhaps this is because you have always strived for self-sufficiency, balancing a willingness to share with safeguarding your own interests. Bravo, my friend! I wish my children would learn from your example.
Admonitions for a Fruitful Partnership
As you interact with my people, here are three key recommendations:
” The struggle against neo-colonialism is not aimed at excluding the capital of the developed world from operating in less developed countries. It is aimed at preventing the financial power of the developed countries being used in such a way as to impoverish the less developed. “
Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah
- Reject Neo-colonialism: Embrace true independence and self-determination. Empower African nations to control their own resources and development paths. How does it feel to be free from subtle forms of political, economic, social, or technical domination? How does it feel to have the autonomy to manage foreign influence and respond as you see fit? You understand this because you have achieved it; otherwise, you wouldn’t be a formidable presence on the world stage. You have shown that your economic system and political policies are not directed from outside but from within, but at some point, you have faced the challenges of the perpetrators of colonialism and neo-colonialism. My question then to you is, would you also pursue the same thing? Remember, I asked if you would just copy and paste the blueprint or pursue your good intentions, building a “community with a shared future” above the unfair domination of the West?
- Emphasize Inclusive Growth: The message we want to convey to you is this: Come help us build ourselves the same way you organized help to build yourself. Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Founding Father of modern Ghana, explains perfectly why we cannot achieve growth within Africa through neo-colonialism: “The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world. The struggle against neo-colonialism is not aimed at excluding the capital of the developed world from operating in less developed countries. It is aimed at preventing the financial power of the developed countries being used in such a way as to impoverish the less developed.”
The premise of self-interest, I believe, is always to put one’s needs before everything else, and it is intellectually plausible to pursue what you need in order to secure your own existence. But when those actions lead to the underdevelopment of the other, I believe there is a cause for alarm. So as you move your military into my territory, as you find ways to assume economic control over my raw materials without any added value, and as my indebtedness through loans to you increases and my market becomes your dumping place for your cheap products, and as the doors to my political elite are widely open to you, what would you do? What type of government will you finance? Which institutions have you implemented to manage my natural and economic resources? Which favorable public servants would you put in charge of your administrations? Would you support corruption and bribery from the private sector to public servants? Would you develop balkanization or implement your own cultural control? Would you allow promising students to study within their countries so they can be confronted with the daily realities or uproot them and teach them your truth?
The questions are many, and the checklist goes on, but how we respond to these questions will determine whether you have fully copied and pasted your predecessors’ blueprint for your own advancement and advantage without thinking about me and the long-term implications for the future of my children. So it is a recommendation and admonition that as you gather the political heads of my nations, from whom I prefer to reserve my comments, you would think of the ordinary, everyday African child. Those whose lands are destroyed by greedy gold diggers who want to satisfy your need for more metals and minerals. Think of the poor who spend their money on your cheap products, which don’t give them any value for their money, as they will eventually lose their money and the product in no time.
I want you to think of the factors that still keep the people impoverished and see if you have come to help remedy it or if you have come to add to the misery of my people. I am of the notion and strong trust in you, my friend China, that you have no need of practicing neo-colonization, as to me, you do not have too much internal struggle of classism. And if the purpose of neo-colonialism was to appease the struggle between the few rich and the many poor, then I think you have done a good job doing this: “China’s lifting of more than 800 million people out of extreme poverty since the late 1970s has been the largest global reduction in inequality in modern history. The whole reform program is often referred to in brief as the ‘open door policy.’” So let’s face it, in your pursuit of many agreements with capitalist, wealthy nations, my admonition is to consider that you have already done way better in raising the living standards of your people without necessarily subjugating or forcefully impoverishing others to your advantage. So why would you do that now?
3. Uphold Humanity: Hold on to your definition of humanity and show those before you that it can be done the right way, where we all share in what we create—from those who worked the ground to those who processed it through the machines, and those who market and those who bought them. Each in the chain deserves to get an equally respectable part of the breaking of the bread. Ditch the solely extractive economic practices. I am forced to think that you mean well to me, my friend China, and that your national interest is of utmost importance, but your reputation as a superpower and the legacy of world leadership are also important to you. So bear with me when I implore you to stand in my defense also. For, after all, who is a friend, and what are friendships for? Some reading about our correspondence might think that I have become naive, but if I am naive, it is because I have always believed in the goodness of mankind, and as Africa, I have seen myself as the origin of all, so what can I do but serve them? But with great pain, I see that those who represent my people don’t even represent the interests of the people but their own individual privileged interests.
Persistent Challenges
Today, as I write, the income gap between Africa and the rest of the world is still getting bigger and growing. And while you have managed to lift 800 million people from poverty since the 1970s, my people are still on a decline into poverty and suffering. There are many factors that have contributed to the current woes of my people, and while some have done their utmost best to weather the storm, many are still struggling. Slavery, plundering, colonization, and the abuse that I, as a continent, have had to endure are evident in the living standards of my people. Those of my children who had good intentions right after independence to restore my people back to dignity were sabotaged, derailed, disbanded, and some were even eliminated. From there, they ushered Africa into my first point, neo-colonisation and those who are the oil in this machine are the so-called imposed “elites” who have helped in the extractive economic practices while pocketing the little percentage they are able to get from their overlords and leaving the masses of people to their own fate and faith.
The most disturbing of all is that it seems like the elected officials and their advisors are not able to make decisions that protect the masses, neither can the people fully rely on the state to supply effective and inclusive economic institutions to cater to their needs. When it comes to the concern for the people at the bottom in Africa, they are, but shouldn’t only be, the concern of the African elites alone but anyone who seeks to engage with the interior. Helping a few people at the top get rich and concentrate the decision powers in their hands has proven backward, as they do not have the interest to invest in: “the economic institutions that create the basic incentives that make a society prosperous,” according to the book Why Nations Fail, co-authored by the M.I.T. economist Daron Acemoglu and the Harvard political scientist James A. Robinson.
The Plea
My dear friend, as I make my way to the conclusion, I want to urge you in your dealings to think of the people at the bottom. Teach your administrators and implementers to keep humanity central in their actions, for what goes up must come down. We are witnessing those who once thought they were ahead of everyone coming to terms with their own making. If their actions didn’t serve them well, I am very sure it wouldn’t serve you well to simply copy and paste their blueprint without editing and discarding the elements that destroyed the very fabric of human development and prosperity for all.
Here is my aspiration, and I hope you will encourage the heads of political powerhouses from Africa at your doorstep to move away from extractive economies and institutions. An opinion written about Why Nations Fail by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times perfectly describes what you could be supporting African states in doing:
“Inclusive economic institutions that enforce property rights, create a level playing field, and encourage investments in new technologies and skills are more conducive to economic growth than extractive economic institutions that are structured to extract resources from the many by the few… Inclusive economic institutions are, in turn, supported by, and support, inclusive political institutions,” which “distribute political power widely in a pluralistic manner and are able to achieve some amount of political centralization so as to establish law and order, the foundations of secure property rights, and an inclusive market economy.” Conversely, extractive political institutions that concentrate power in the hands of a few reinforce extractive economic institutions to hold power.
Conclusion: A Pact of Hope and Shared Prosperity
As I conclude this letter, my friend China, I want to reiterate that the future of Africa lies not in the shadows of past exploitation but in the light of mutually beneficial partnerships. I urge you to break free from the patterns of old and to forge a new model of cooperation—one where your strength is not a source of fear but a beacon of hope for my people.
Africa stands ready to work with you, China, to build a future where our people thrive, our economies flourish, and our voices are heard on the global stage. Let us remember the shared humanity that binds us and strive for a world where prosperity and progress are not the privilege of the few, but the birthright of all. The choices you make today will echo through history. Choose wisely, my friend, and let us together write a new chapter of friendship, understanding, and shared destiny for Africa and China.
Sincerely,
Africa
Footnotes:
1. fs. blog
3. https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nkrumah/neo-colonialism/introduction.htm
4. Afrika: een gedroomde toekomst by Loïc De Cannière
Africa Thinkers 